In today’s strip, Wiley Miller at Non Sequitur dispels that fallacy:
h/t: infiniteimprobabilit
We all believe in the same god
November 5, 2012 • 5:49 am
Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
Hahahahaha 🙂 this is interesting
A couple of weeks ago I met the fabulous Michael de Podesta of the UK’s National Physical Laboratory when he did a talk on Carbon & Global Warming at UCL. He has a nice ‘blog’ & just posted that he has finally found ‘The Middleground’!
http://protonsforbreakfast.wordpress.com/
I saw this today in a blog comment by the atheist (and blog owner):
That’s a different view of believing in the same god.
I also know a lot of progressive Christians — as well as a lot of progressive Spiritual-But-Not-Religious — and I don’t think it’s wise to take their word on what they initially tell the atheist. Or even what they tell themselves.
It’s not so much that they’re lying, as that they’re confused. God is a human construct; God is fundamental reality. There is no supernatural; reductionist materialist atheist skeptic naturalists are wrong. Whether you believe in God or not isn’t as important as how you behave; without a belief in God life is hollow, empty, and without purpose. All religions are personal paths to truth and cannot be right or wrong; people who have religions which don’t assert this are WRONG. Either; both. First one, then the other, then at the same time, depending on who is in the room, how you feel, and what is needed.
Ecumenicism thus extends to epistemology. From what I can tell, their thinking on these issues is deliberately muddled in an attempt to be tolerant and holistic and not too rational or judgmental. They apparently find it easy to hold two opposing opinions at the same time as long as there is a superficial resemblance in how it’s stated. They then slide back and forth between meanings, playing on deepities. When you try to pin them down and get them to be clear on exactly what they mean, they generally tend to react with outrage — as if you’re not playing fair.
Clarity is their enemy.
Those who fail to “respond” positively to religion or spirituality are presumed to be lacking in sensitivity, insight, character, and aesthetics. Unless they’re talking to YOU. I mean, no, they don’t mean you, of course. Nor do they really mean it anyway. It’s all very fuzzy and intuitive — can’t be explained in words. We’re just in different paradigms, different kinds of people. No right or wrong, no true or false, it all comes down to faith and how you respond to God. So let’s change the subject, okay?
Like hell we will.
+1
The term, “progressive Christian” means about the same as “moderate Muslim”: both want to get all of the freedom and the cool stuff the modern world offers, yet out of childhood brainwashing and fear of ostracism from their “herd” (and worse, in the case of Islam)they cling, often implacably, to unprovable nonsense. In maintaining this stance, they lend false credence (not to mention support and money) to their “faith”, which then continues to be available to be taken up by the truly insane fanatics.
While Bertrand Russell was being processed for imprisonment as a draft resister during World War I, he filled out a form that asked what his religion was. He wrote “agnostic,” whereupon the jailer remarked, “Isn’t it wonderful? We may belong to different religions, but we all believe in the same one God.”
{I recently saw this on a blog, possibly even this one.]
My God Is Bigger Than Your God.
Close, but no cigar.
Actually, it’s, “My god can beat up your god.”
b&
That’s the subtext.
Always listen to Captain Subtext 😉
Or My God Is So Big It Includes Your God.
People who do this one really, really like to use the analogy of the Blind Men and the Elephant when talking about God: YOU are like one of the blind men; THEY are like the other blind men; **I** am like the storyteller.
…and, yet, as you observed above, they get upset when we point out that not one single one of the blind men are present to report their findings; the reports of their findings are more consistent with drug-fuelled hallucinations than anything anybody else has ever experienced; and the sum of the accounts not only doesn’t add up to what the ecumenicalist is reporting but they don’t add up as anything at all outside of a diverse collection of faery tales from different cultures.
b&
They really get upset when you ask them these questions:
1.)Why couldn’t the blind men get together, report their findings, and then use their data to form and test predictions, gradually arriving at the conclusion that “hey — it’s an elephant?”
2.) In the Land of the Obtuse Blind Men, how come the person reciting what happened should be trusted?
It’s that last one that really gets their goat, for it’s the same as Toto pulling back the curtain….
b&
I love the word “faery”.
Whenever is hear the word “god”, I think “faery”.